Blog 2– a little global empowerment
I have been letting the health care issue frustrate me. I had planned on talking about the breast cancer commercial against health care reform and how angry it made me when I saw it. I had planned on what would have probably been a long diatribe on the withholding of basic medical care as a tool of oppression. Then I came across this:
and I was reminded that anger and righteous indignation, even if justified, doesn’t address many of the problems that we face today. What can we do to address these things? We can educate to empower.
Why is this important to me? Because it is easy to be angry. It is easy to let our anger overwhelm us into a feeling of powerlessness. Anger can be a motivator for great social change… but only after we let it go. We do not think clearly when we are angry.
As I reflect on my anger at the lies being told to the public, I realize that I am angry at the wrong people. Politics and media are both about rhetoric and manipulation; it shouldn’t surprise me that they are targeting women with what they think we fear most. We do fear breast cancer, and we fear it for many reasons. I think it is the reasons that we fear it that I should be angry about.
For example: Breast cancer generally develops for 10 years before it is detectable. With the amazing advances in medicine that we have experienced over the last decade, why have we not developed a way to detect it sooner? Early detection is the key to survival… we need to actively work to find it sooner!
Surgical treatments are painful, physically disfiguring, and often excessive. Scarring can cause complications with musculature and lymphatic flow. The removal of lymph vessals compromises the immune system. If we can create a “robot doctor” why can’t we figure out how to remove cancer from the breast without destroying a woman’s physical and emotional health?
Without insurance, a mammogram costs $600 and up. A woman needs at least two with a period of time between them in order to detect changes in breast structure. Women without insurance simply cannot afford this. There are some assistance programs in place, but many people do not know about them or do not have access to them. This is simply unacceptable! If a woman without insurance finds a lump during a self-exam, she is not likely to call her doctor (if she even has one) right away for two reasons: (1) she cannot afford the diagnostics, and (2) a diagnosis may exclude her from the possibility of becoming insured in the future. Mammograms and breast ultrasounds need to be affordable and easily accessible to every single woman.
The media comes out with reports that self-exams and mammograms are not always reliable, so many women stop doing them. These are still the best tools that we have for early detection.
Most women are not taught to do self-exams properly. Women are discouraged from touching their breasts so they do not know what they really feel like. If a woman does not know how her breasts feel, she cannot tell when they change. Women have to be educated and encouraged to feel their breasts regularly.
Young women are encouraged to believe that they do not need to worry about breast cancer until they are older. Facts say otherwise. Men aren’t told that they can also have breast cancer.
There is a lot to be angry about when it comes to breast cancer. Putting the anger aside, I have to ask what I can do to change things. What can I do to educate people? How can I make sure that information is easily accessible to everyone, everywhere? What can we, as a community, do?
I will have to think on this, and I hope that you do as well.
